Princeton University is facing demands to fire a tenured professor who was once accused of participating in a campaign to kill enemies of Iran, the Post reported.
The school is also facing a congressional investigation into why it hired Seyyed Hossein Mousabian, a professor who lectures on Middle East security and nuclear policy, even though he is a former top Iranian diplomat steeped in Tehran’s reign of terror. facing.
Mousabian was recruited by the Ivy League school in 2009. Previously, he was a prominent figure in the Iranian government as a diplomat and editor of the regime’s mouthpiece, the English-language newspaper Tehran Times.
He was Iran’s ambassador to Germany and was involved in the 1992 murder of four dissidents behind a Berlin restaurant, but opposition groups have called for him to be stripped of his job at the Woodrow Wilson School of Government. The situation arose.
The House Education and Labor Committee, chaired by Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), will ask what kind of testing Princeton did and whether the Obama administration encouraged the school to offer Mousabian a job. I am seeking to know.
Rhodan Bazargan, a former political prisoner, human rights activist, and member of the U.S.-based Iranian Alliance Against the Islamic Regime, said, “Mr. Mousabian’s troubling history of ties to state-sponsored terrorism and human rights abuses has led to We need decisive action from university authorities.” Apologists.
When the paper reached out to Mousabian for comment, he declined to be interviewed, but provided links to previous interviews suggesting that “Zionists” were targeting him.
Groups calling for Princeton’s removal say he was an enemy of the mullahs and killed 23 Iranians in Europe when he was ambassador to Germany.
Among them were four Iranian Kurdish leaders shot dead by Hezbollah in a Greek restaurant in Berlin in 1992.
In 1997, a German court concluded that Iranian leadership, including the Foreign Ministry, masterminded the murder and that the headquarters of the plot was the Iranian embassy.
The Tagesspiegel newspaper reported that during the trial, former Iranian spy Abolqasem Mesbahi said under oath that “Moosavian was involved in most of the crimes that took place in Europe.”
“In Germany in particular, crimes committed against Iranian rebels are a problem.
“Iran was always involved, even if German authorities could not necessarily determine that the Iranian government was involved.”
The ruling led almost all European Union member states to recall their ambassadors from Tehran (German newspaper) Der Spiegel reportedand Mousabian was returned to Tehran.
Mousabian was not named in the court’s final opinion, but this is a point made in Mousabian’s defense by another Princeton professor, Frank von Hippel, before the House Armed Services Committee last September. be. I asked why Moosavian was invited. He attended an event held by the Military Strategic Command, which is responsible for the United States’ nuclear deterrent.
Bazargan wrote in a letter to Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber this month that Mousabian’s “role in directing violence against innocent civilians is evidence of complicity in Iran’s nefarious activities and that he “This further highlights the dangers of remaining at Princeton.”
online petition The effort to have Princeton remove Mousabian from his post was launched by the group earlier this month.
The move comes as Congressman Foxx demands that Eisgruber explain why Princeton is hiring Mousabian, warning that Mousabian has “worked for the Iranian regime throughout his professional life.” This was done in response to what was done.
In a four-page letter sent to Eisgruber in November, Foxx and other Republican committee members asked about Mousabian’s interactions with Iran and whether a foreign government pays Mousabian. he demanded.
His positions on schools over the past 15 years “raise serious concerns about the influence of hostile foreign regimes on America’s educational institutions,” the committee wrote.
Mousabian was arrested by Iran in 2007 on charges of “espionage” and was considered a risk to national security, but was allowed to leave the country to take up a role at Princeton University.
A House of Commons committee called his relationship with the regime “opaque” and said he had been able to return to Iran freely in recent years.
Mousabian declined to comment Tuesday. In a 2022 interview with Iran’s Arman Mehri newspaper, Mousabian claimed that the murder was carried out by Israeli and US agents.
In the email to daily princetonian Mousabian said last year: “I have not been able to travel to Iran since June 2021 and have not engaged with any government, including the Iranian government, since an Iranian court convicted me in 2008.” .
Princeton University did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Fox’s committee is also investigating anti-Semitism in the Ivy League. The investigation led to the removal of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University in early December after they testified that whether the university’s rules call for the extermination of Jews depends on the “context.”
The committee last week demanded answers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over anti-Semitism on campus following Hamas’ October 7 massacre of hundreds of Israelis.
